A lot of us are experiencing more and more anxiety these days and that can make situations feel unbearably difficult. Although there is a lot of information freely available to help us understand it more, that doesn’t necessarily help us when we are actually feeling anxious.
Throughout my education, I was always working on myself to try and overcome anxiety in the long run but there were times that I needed help then and there. Thankfully, now that most of us have smartphones, we can get help no matter where we are.
Below are some of the apps that I tried out and that helped me. They all offer different things but hopefully, you should be able to find something that will work for you.
#5 - Self-help for Anxiety Management
This app was one that I used when I was at university sometimes. It’s totally free and has quite a few good features. The reason I used it most was that they offered a few exercises that you could do wherever you are. My personal favourite is the one where you select a picture and you slowly clear it with your finger. To start with, it seemed pointless but it helped to shift my attention and forced me to find different ways to utilise it (such as breathing in on one swipe and out on another). It also offers a social platform and a mood tracker so that you can see what’s been going on.
It is a pretty basic app though so you may reach a point where it isn’t that helpful. However, it does offer a few things to keep you going and can help you in the moment.
#4 - Headspace
This is an app that is more focused on being mindful which is something that helps many people deal with their anxiety. It offers you a program of guided meditation every day for a certain period of time (for example, 7 days). Every session, it’ll teach you new skills. I found it really helpful at the start of the day as it would only take up 10 minutes of my time and I would feel calmer.
However, most of their content requires a subscription which can be frustrating. Their free course does give you a good idea though, if it’ll work for you or not.
#3 - Pacifica
This app offers guided meditation and lessons on how to focus on specific areas of your life. It has a built in mood tracker that you can use to analyse your moods and to see what could be causing certain feelings. One thing that I love about it is that for each “lesson”, it adds a feature of background noise which you can control how loud you want it in contrast to the person speaking.
The negative is that there is a lot of material that is locked, so you’d need to subscribe to gain access. It also feels quite limited with how it helps your anxiety as it is great for evenings but not so much for when you’re out.
#2 - Breethe
This is an app that has a lot to it and should be able to help you in various ways, not just anxiety. It offers you guided meditation, lessons on overcoming anxiety, music, sleeping playlists etc. which is great for helping you relax.
Personally, it is not something that I find useful when I’m anxious as it’s normally triggered when I’m out and about and it can’t provide me with something in the moment. There also a number of premium features that you have to pay for. This isn’t a problem but it can be frustrating when you find something that might be useful to you (for example, anxiety at work) but then you have to pay to unlock it.
#1 - Mindshift
This is an app very new to me but it seems to have a bit of everything. There are a number of guided meditations to help you calm down, there are written strategies that you can implement, there are challenges you can try and there are also coping cards and journals to help with your thoughts and feelings. The interface itself is really easy to navigate around and the fact that it can help immediately and in the long run is incredible.
The only downside may be that there aren’t any interactive activities included to help with you anxiety but the only app I have used that does is #5.
There are so many apps now available that can help you with your anxiety, it’s just a case of finding the ones that suit you. It’s clear that although many are “free”, they encourage you to pay in order to gain more access, but that’s up to you. In my opinion, the paid-for content which are usually guided meditations, can be found elsewhere (such as YouTube). The fantastic thing is though, there are a few apps that can help lower your anxiety in the moment and help you get through it.
Comments